On January 30, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency on the spread of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) that originated in Wuhan, China. Healthcare experts have warned that Covid-19 could rapidly spread, if not properly contained, and many governments around the world have begun to take precautionary measures to ensure public health safety. Amid the international concern and heightened fears about the disease, what is fact and what is fiction? The Asia Society Hong Kong Center brings you regular updates on the coronavirus story in Hong Kong that has reverberations elsewhere in the world. We are pleased to present on-the-ground public health experts and internationally renowned specialists with the latest facts and evidence-based findings regarding this epidemic outbreak. In episode 14, hear from Dr Peter Forster, Fellow, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, UK Director of Research, Institute for Forensic Genetics, Muenster, Germany. S. Alice Mong, Executive Director of Asia Society Hong Kong Center will moderate the discussion.

Dr Peter Forster
Fellow, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, UK Director of Research, Institute for Forensic Genetics, Muenster, Germany

Dr. Peter Forster studied chemistry at the Universities of Kiel and Hamburg in Germany. At the Heinrich-Pette-Institut for Virology and Immunology in Hamburg, he specialised in genetics and obtained his PhD degree in 1997 in biology on the topic of "Dispersal and differentiation of modern Homo sapiens analysed with mitochondrial DNA". After postdoctoral research at the Institute for Legal Medicine at the University of Münster, he was appointed a Fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge University in 1999. In 2012, he was elected a life member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and in 2016 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology.

Research: Developing and applying phylogenetic network methods to human DNA since 1995, Peter Forster identified the first successful human migration populating the world from an African origin, and dated this migration to 55,000 years ago. Their descendants travelled on average about 200 to 1,000 metres per year and reached Asia, Australia and Europe just over 40,000 years ago, and America around 20,000 years ago.